Cead Mile Failte!So. How are you surviving this heatwave? I know I'm already looking forward to winter again. Portland has been rather tame this year but looking at the map with the 90s in Alaska and most of the US drenched in the 100+ range I feel pretty darn lucky were only in the low 90s. Regardless, I'm betting most of you are stepping away from those portable heaters we call computers and opting for some quality time in air-conditioned places. This next month we've got quite a bit of action arriving on our doorstep so if you brave the cyberland we will definitely have something for you to do. DirectoryGet InvolvedGaiscioch Family NewsGaiscioch Summer 2019 SummitAugust 10th at 5 PM PT Join us for our quarterly look into the community and see what's news on the horizon. Bring some questions as we will have an AMA part of the event. Topics we'll be discussing are Guild Wars 2, Elder Scrolls Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Conqueror's Blade, and we'll be taking a peek at some of the things coming our way this next quarter. These events are important to our community as it allows us a chance to get to know each other, voice ideas and concerns, and helps us gain visibility on what is attracting the attention of our player base. We will also be giving away several Gaiscioch Patches during the stream that will be mailed to you. (Yes I know I'm behind on mailing things was waiting on this month's summit to do it all at once.) Try to be there if you can as the more people we have the better they typically go. We will have it available to watch on YouTube if you're unable to make it. Tune in to the stream live at https://twitch.tv/gaiscioch and join us in discord for the AMA session. The Perfect StormGet ready folks. Here comes the storm we've been waiting for! For years we have waited for that next chapter, and the perfect storm has reached our horizon. We have identified 3 major players that would most likely be suitable candidates. We're going to be seriously looking at the new Lord of the Rings MMO by Amazon Game Studios and Athlon Games (I'm dubbing Middle-Earth Online or ME:O until it gets a real name), Magic the Gathering MMO by Cryptic and our fan-favorite Ashes of Creation by Intrepid Studios. Now that said there are a few others that meet the general requirements and could potentially become a chapter if interest grew. Right now we're just not seeing enough demand out of them. They are Chronicles of Elyria, Astellia Online, and Ascent: Infinite Realms. All three feature deep a PvE experience as well as PvP. It still remains a mystery where guild size limitations will end up on any of these so it's still too early to declare but the good news is that there are 6 total likely candidates we are seriously looking at and most of the hit alpha/beta in the next year. Vote for your favorites below! Annual Gaiscioch Community Celebration at PAX WestJoin us at Fado's Irish Pub in Seattle, WA on Saturday, August 31st, between 6 pm and 9 pm to meet several of our local and distant Gaiscioch. Gaiscioch Elders Foghladha, Donaliam, Nona, Soren, and Screenager are all planning on attending. All attendees will go home with a little something from the family. Learn more at: New Discord BotI recently discovered YAGPDB.xyz on another server and liked what it was doing for role management. Upon cracking it open I discovered it had a wealth of other features built into it as well. So I decided to invite the bot to our server and start working on setting it up. Choosing your roles just got a lot easier. Simply go to the #channel-access-settings and click on the reaction icons for the games your playing. The bot will assign you the related roles. No more guesswork, no more -rank commands. Simply click to add, click to remove. Another neat feature this bot has is its event system which automatically sends reminders and sets the time to your time zone. It has an RSVP system that will ping you when the event is about to begin. I have tested it out for several events so far and it has worked well. I've even written a guide on how to do it on our forums. That said, it is NOT a replacement for our website's calendar and at this point, I do not have a way to connect the two. But it's good for some of our special events like meetups and conventions. Some of the other things it can do that I haven't set up yet is a ticketing system for help desk stuff. It also has a polling engine, custom commands, a slew of statistics and moderation tools, the ability to read feeds from YouTube and Reddit and more. Inside the FamilyGaiscioch Family Patreons:Want to give a special shout-out to those members who are helping enable our community to do great things. Their financial support has allowed us to expand the tools at our disposal and maintain the community without burning a hole in my personal savings. While a still do pay a bit out of pocket their contributions have prevented me from having to work side gigs to keep us afloat and for that, I am eternally grateful. It's at a manageable level I am comfortable with. Without these Patreons, you'd be seeing a lot less of me. Thank you for keeping me in-game and focused on growing our community. Avohaiel
WilliamBrandis
Radiologikal
Rhynor
verve
Kageshukuun
Blienmeis
Venorik
CerrisCharredOak
Borrys
Ghengiz
Isha
Varder
Z. C.Kay
S. DeRouen
Whoflung
Robdalf
Nikodemus
DRHamp
Birdee
Somercy2163
Weebitt
Thargond
Ruuta
Eiahn
Randeth
Donaliam
xrist04
Gaiscioch Family Promotions:I wanted to take a moment to say congratulations to a few members this month for accepting their next credo and stepping into a new role in our family. Official Members (Lorgaire)Official Members have earned the rank of Lorgaire and have accepted the Mark of the Kindred credo. They have officially decided to become members of the family and start their journey to ascend the roles of the Gaiscioch Family. » Breg » Deathjammer » Stormkaster » Sword Please Welcome Our Newest MembersGaiscioch By The Numbers
Member Rewards
The Hunt For
|
Tuesdays
Wednesdays
|
Fridays
Saturdays
Sundays
|
Since we posted our listing on the Guild Finder we've seen a pretty decent surge of new members. This is the perfect time to plan some new activities. Throughout August I'll be feeling out some event ideas to see what people are interested in.
ESO was recently ranked as the #2 most populated MMO on the market right now with over 4.2 million players and I'm certain there is interest in grouping up for some activities. It's just a matter of figuring out what you're interested in doing together. Come to the summit to discuss your ideas :).
As the new DLC Launches, you can expect my weekly Monday 6 PM PT event to cover as much as we can of this new area. Here's what ZeniMax has announced:
The Season of the Dragon continues with Scalebreaker, bringing two challenging new dungeons for you and your team: Moongrave Fane and Lair of Maarselok. Battle a powerful vampire and put an end to the corrupting influence of an all-new Dragon. The fight has only just begun!
Be sure to join us in-game to take on more dragon and engage in some epic vampire hunting activities. Learn more at https://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/updates/dlc/scalebreaker
All Times Pacific
Mondays
|
Fridays Sundays |
Yes, it's Eastern, yet there is NO forced PvP. After playing the first beta extensively and taking the booster to Max level. This game seriously reminds me of RIFT. It plays and feels very similar. The coolest aspect is that you can set up your skills to fire in any order by pressing the same key. Much like how you would set up macros in RIFT, Astellia allows you to sequence your skills to make button-mashing easier.
For those that enjoy PVP, there is a giant warzone which is a 3 faction PvP arena that supports up to 1000 players per map. After wandering around the map in the last test there was a lot of vertical space with multiple heights layered upon the map. There are NPC defended nodes to capture to earn points for your realm. The PvP areas are pretty massive and I was only able to wander around about a third of the map in the time I had available.
While many have overlooked this game rolling it into the "Oh it's another eastern game" category, I feel the need to proclaim that it may be easier, but a lot of those reasons you hate eastern games are not present. There is no griefing in this game which is a huge upside and the gameplay feels very familiar. If we had the following for this one it would meet our chapter compatibility matrix with flying colors. The only thing holding it back is people lumping it into the same box with Bless, Aion, Archeage, and Black Desert.
There's no place like home, and now we have one! After months of waiting, we finally unlocked the ability to purchase a kin house. We found a neighborhood that was almost completely empty in Spearwall, Bree Homestead. As soon as we planted our flag the neighborhood filled up with members flocking to the village. There are all the amenities you need at or near our kin house. Task boards, merchants, crafting supplies, tools and most importantly shared vaults.
Here's a handy guide to our neighborhood:
Join us in Middle-Earth by going to https://gsch.info/sa/lotro
The house grows stronger. Now in month 2 since the open beta began we have one member over level 100 and a handful on the cusp. We continue to rotate our roster on a 2-week AFK rotation and are constantly receiving more applicants. If you return to the game and plan to play regularly be sure to resubmit a request to join in the game.
If you can't commit to a regular playtime search the guild list for Gaiscioch. That guild is in our alliance and you are welcome to join and still participate in the community. We won't be rotating that roster until it fills up. It is also a great place to put your secondary character.
There are a lot of PvE sieges to participate in if you don't enjoy the PvP side of the game. Both sides can progress and be a viable player in the game. If you never set foot in PvP you could still see all this game has to offer. Feel free to check it out as it is one of the best Free-2-Play games available.
That said we are actively looking to build a team of 15-20 PvPers to help our house and our allied houses secure territory. Territory Wars occur every Tuesday and Saturday from 7:30 PM to 8:30 PM. If you are able to play at that time and love PvP be sure to join us!
Join the Adventure by going to https://gsch.info/sa/cb
The first piece of the actual MMO makes its way to testing this month. The Mayoral Caravan escort missions will be appearing on the apocalypse testing platform soon. These will be mostly PvE (not sure if PvP is included at all) and require you and your friends to move a caravan from one city to another. All the while surviving waves of being attacked by all means of creatures. This is the framework for one of the cornerstone systems of expanding your node's wealth and fortune. In addition, we should see siege testing this fall if they stick to their timeline. Once this makes its way into testing expect to see an event on the calendar.
Join the adventure at https://gsch.info/sa/aoc
Sharpen those axes! Last month Rune 2 ran a quick beta for their deathmatch mode. Over the next month, we should get a peek at the new 4-player coop campaign. Since it shifted directions from a PVP survival game to a cooperative adventure with various additional PvP modes (more in line with the classic Rune) fans have been pretty divided. Personally, I welcome the change and look forward to adventuring with a few of you who decide to play.
Join the adventure at http://gsch.info/sa/rune
A new MMORPG was recently revealed by a studio of our friends from the north in Canada. They've recruited a few of us to help them guide the development of their game and provide testing support as it moves forward. If you've ever wanted to see a game while it's being developed this is a good chance. You will be talking directly with devs in this and you will never have a better chance to have developers hear your suggestions as you will in one of these Pre-Alpha tests. If you're interested in participating in this testing team please let me know and I can get you set up. But I need people who are in it to help make better games, not people looking to try before they buy. This game is very early in its development phase and is mostly testing various game systems at this point, at set dates and times. It's nowhere near its final form.
All Times Pacific
Mondays
Tuesdays
Wednesdays
Thursdays
Fridays
Saturdays
View Full Social Adventure Directory
You may have noticed a bit of a slowdown on how often articles come out. Over the past few years, various life changes have pulled members away from the team and we haven't really had any new volunteers join the team. We are looking for people who would like to write articles. Even if you don't think your good at spelling or grammar we have a team of editors ready and waiting to make you sound like a rockstar.
There are a lot of benefits to being a writer on our team. Here are a few big points:
We're really hurting for writers right now and if I can't find some new ones soon we won't have much of a magazine to publish. You can help us keep it alive and moving forward.
join the magazine team at https://www.gaiscioch.com/gschmag/
Next Magazine Team Meeting:
Sat. Sep. 7th at 2:00PM
Be sure to check out our latest stories and gaming news at: https://www.gaisciochmagazine.com/
Slan Go Foill!
(Goodbye for Now)
Benjamin "Foghladha" Foley |